providers. >> we're at a different stage in history and a lot of people are seeing their news this way and we need to expand it and make sure we're on all of those platforms as well as the ones we already are on. so thank you again to senator grassley for working with me to highlight c-span's critical role and thanks to everyone who has had a command in c-span's success. happy birthday. >> c-span 2, 39 years of bringing the u.s. senate live into homes across the country. thanks to the support of our cable partners. together, we bring you democracy unfiltered. >> democracy, it isn't just an idea, it's a process, a process shaped by leaders, elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles performs it's where debates unfold and decisions are made

and the nation's course is charted. democracy in real time. this is your government at work. this is c-span. giving you your democracy unfiltered. >> members of the congressional hispanic caucus and house democrats spoke to reporters about the recent visit to immigration detention centers across the u.s. members shared their experiences at the detention centers calling them for-profit prisons and said the trump administration is focused on targeted cruelty instead of immigration enforcement. this is about 50 minutes.

>> good morning, everyone p. thank you all for being here. this is an important press conference. i want to thank congresswoman sylvia garcia, tremendous leader in the congressional hispanic caucus for putting this together. as you know, the congressional hispanic caucus, as well as other members of the house of representatives, are deeply concerned about detention centers and how they are housing our folks that may have work permits, individuals that are getting swiftly picked up as they make an appointment with their i.c.e. officers or the courts. so these are folks that are complying with what they agreed to do. they want to stay on the straight and narrow. they want to make sure they were

within the parameters of the law, so they agree to periodically visit i.c.e. officers or the courtroom, and what's happening is they're getting handcuffed and sent to a detention center and ripped away from their families. both myself and congresswoman nydia valazquez visited one of these detention centers and found that many of the people that were there and had been arrested and detained are parents and spouses to u.s. citizen children and u.s. citizen spouses, that in fact many of them were complying with these appointments in a courtroom or one of the i.c.e. offices when they got stopped and detained. that even some of them have

asked to be deported but these privately run prisons are keeping them for an extended period of time. some of them bounced around from detention center to detention center across the country while they asked to be deported back to their home nation. they aren't able to do that. so this is a crisis, a crisis where we must determine whether these centers are motivated by the profit margins that they make and whether due process is being dramatically violated, where families, mixed status families where one spouse is undocumented where a citizen spouse and citizen children are being ripped apart, weakening our nation. so this is the state of affairs

in america. as we speak to you right now, there is fear out there. and what will happen, is that the word will get out, don't report. because if you try to comply with the rules and regulations, you will be penalized, you will be picked up and deported. and once that happens, they will come back. with the excuse that these folks are violating the law p. so it's a catch-22. on the one hand comply, come to court and visit your i.c.e. officer. on the other hand, when you do, you get arrested so you won't go and then you're in violation of the law. it's entrapment, i think. so we will fight back. we will continue to hold these centers accountable. it is our jurisdiction to have oversight over them. and we have a tremendous group

of members of congress. and by the way, the louisiana system is particularly egregious and there's litigation going on now as we speak challenging the humanity of it. so with that i leave you with representative sylvia garcia from houston, texas. ms. garcia: thank you all for joining us today and thank you to all my colleagues here standing strong to ensure that we as members of congress continue and keep our oversight responsibilities and continue to visit this detention centers so that we can ensure that they're running properly, that they're not mistreating people, and that they're following the rules of the law. we know how important it is to shine a light where others would rather keep the truth hidden.

that's your jobs. that's why i take my role in congressional oversight so seriously. during the district work period, c.h.c. members and house democrats didn't take a break. we went out into our communities and to detention facilities to see what's happening to people in i.c.e. custody. this administration has shown an abject contempt for the constitution. they've twisted the department of homeland security into a secret police force to terrorize immigrants. and in many cases, u.s. citizens as well. they're wearing masks and ambushing people. republicans told the american people that immigration enforcement would target dangerous individuals, rapists, murderers, drug dealers, or cartel and go on and on about these heinous crimes. but that's not the case we're finding. we just saw another story last week in massachusetts, a high

schooler on his way to sports practice was taken and vanished into an i.c.e. facility. as of today, i still don't know where he is. that's what made it to the front page. imagine what's happening that's not making the front page, that's not making the front page? that's why these oversight investigations are so important. last week i visited a houston contract facility, one of the privately owned, as the chairman put it, and met with the operators and i.c.e. representative. we were able to tour the facility. we didn't get much pushback. and we toured it and saw their medical facilities. we saw a pharmacy and family visitations happening in real time. but the work is not over. this is one of more than 150i.c.e. facilities currently in use and that number is going

up by the day. there are nearly 50,000 people in detention and texas has more than 12,000 of them. democrats across the country inspecting facilities, demanding answers and making sure we use the powers of oversight to protect the rights of all. but again, this is not happening at the moment. what is happening, in my view, is just sinister, cruel, and inhumane. of the 800 detainees at the facility the day i was there, i asked the so-called warden about how many of them -- and i looked at him and said look, i'm a texan, you're a texan, we know what a felony or heinous crime is, about these 800 people, how many would fit that category? and he said, ma'am, we don't keep of track of that. i said what's your guess, you're the warden. oh, i would say about 10.

10 out of 800 are the people that the convict in the white house talked about in his campaign, that he would go after the heinous rapists and killers, that maybe 10 at this facility of 800 because the people there are exactly the people that the chairman talked about, they're parents, they're spouses, they're workers, they're contributing to our country. this administration is taking far too many people that came here legally with protections and even some u.s. citizens, including citizen children. they're acting like the constitution just doesn't apply to them. they're talking about taking away habeas corpus. and i can tell you as a former judge, i'm offended by what is coming out of the white house. i can tell you what they're planning to do they cannot do under the constitution. i tell people all the time, democracy is a gift we pass from one generation to the next.

but it is not guaranteed. it is frail and it would only survive if we fight for it. so this is not just about immigrants. this is about the rule of law. this is about our democracy. this is about whether your government can kidnap a child from a bus stop because of their skin color and send them to a prison because really, that's what they are, without going to court, and without any recourse whatsoever. and the press, keep digs and keep reporting because this caucus, these democrats behind me are here and committed to this fight and will continue to fight and continue our oversight duties no matter who says what. i yield to my colleague from new york, nydia velazquez.

ms. velazquez: good morning, everyone. chairman espaillat and all my colleagues, thank for you being here and visiting centers and putting a human face into in issue. the chairman said he and i visited the detention center in new jersey. and what i saw was heartbreaking. we met people who have lived here for years who have families and who have built lives in their communities. now suddenly, they're uprooted. some have been held for months with no end in sight, no clear time line, no answers, and no way forward. some of the people we met were detained after showing up for routine check-ins and they followed the rules and were taken away anyway. what we and our colleagues

witnessed was a system being used to punish people simply for being immigrant. and we all know that cruelty is the point with this president. and we saw a private prison system profiting off that, making money hand over fist. we asked and we were given information by the detainees, some of them who already asked to be deported. one, a russian woman who asked to be deappropriatorred a year ago. when i asked the warden, why is she still here? no answer.

no concrete information. then i said, someone is making money out of the fact that she's staying here. all these private contractors are profiting from the pain and suffering of people that comply with the law and the rules. that's what is happening. now the next step is to check how much contributions are some people getting out of these contractors. the people we met were not violent felons, just more evidence that trump was lying when he said he was going after criminals. he's going after immigrants, full stop, mothers, union workers, green cardholders, people who have lived here for decades, people with legal protections who are still being

disappeared by this administration. this is what happens when a president decides the rules do not apply to him. when due process is treated and people are treated like they are disposable, we have some people deported to countries where their lives are in danger. legal protections ignored, court orders defied, and billions in taxpayer dollars funneled to private detention centers with no real oversight. and we are here to say hell yes. we will be conducting oversight because that is our constitution al responsibility. hear me loud and clear. thank you. and next we'll have ms. jaypal.

ms. jaypal: thank you, chairman and mr. mr. espaillat and sylvia who put this together and we miss her on the subcommittee. thank to you luke correa who is also on the immigration subcommittee. as ranking member of the immigration subcommittee, i want to thank all my colleagues who exercised their constitutional authority and responsibility to conduct unannounced visits to i.c.e. detention centers in this last work period. as the trump administration ramps up the mass deportation plans sending masked men to snatch and disappear immigrants of all legal statuses across the country, it's critically important we members of congress continue to investigate what are supposed to be civil detention centers but instead operate as

private for-profit prisons with substandard medical care, and they make billions of dollars as congresswoman velazquez said, in contracts from this administration, detaining people of all legal statuses, including legal permanent residents, spouses of u.s. citizens and people who have been living in this country for more than a decade. today in america, we spend $3.4 billion in u.s. taxpayer money on immigration, quote, detention centers that are nothing more than prisons and they make enormous profits all paid for by taxpayers. contrast that with only $840 million we spend on the immigration judicial system, the ability to actually process people and have people get what they need in the courts. we are making it profitable to detain immigrants, most of whom are simply waiting for a bond

hearing and why they're in there, not because they've been convicted of any crime, not because there's anything other than waiting for a bond hearing. and so it's profitable to detain people even when it's illegal, unconstitutional, there's no charge, these detention centers make money over and over again. we in congress intend to hold this administration and these for profit prison companies accountable and will not be detained, deterred or silenced in our responsibility and authority to do so. as a long time immigrant rights leader even before day to congress, the organization i ran did the first ever human rights abuses report on the g.o. run northwest detention center in tacoma. last week with my colleagues, representative randle and dexter, we paid an unannounced visit there. despite being delayed for an hour in entering the facility which was completely needless

and we later heard an apology, and being denied the ability to speak to all the detainees that were there, we were able to speak to two people who i showed up with privacy waivers for them. the first woman has been in the country for 20 years. she was swept up in a raid at the workplace and detained less than a week before she was going to get married to a u.s. citizen. the other person was a man who has been in this country for 31 years as a legal permanent resident. he's a proud member of the machinist union and the primary provider for his u.s. citizen wife and his u.s. citizen children. these are not the so called worst of the worst trump said he would go after. these are simply people who love this country and who have been in this country for decades and who are married to u.s. citizens

and have u.s. citizen children and do not understand why the country they love would be doing this to them. i think we all believe if americans knew who was being imprisoned in these for profit prisons, they would be offended that their taxpayer dollars are being spent on this, and they would understand that if this administration can do this to people who have done no wrong and who are here with legal status, avoid due process, completely undermine all the protections that are built into our constitution, they can do that to anyone. and that is why it is so important that we continue to shine a light on this, that we call it out, and that we refuse to allow the trump administration to get away with what they are doing. and with that, it's my great honor to introduce a tremendous representative from louisiana, one of the places we see a lot of immigrants shipped over to us, representative troy carter. mr. carter: thank you,

representative jaypal and a huge thanks to the leadership and all of my colleagues behind me. i want to thank you all for being here, particularly the press, because we depend on you to transcend the lies, to advance the truth and to dig a little deeper and ask the question why? why? i stood alongside a powerful principled delegation i led in my home state of louisiana, it was bicameral, it was senator markey, congresswoman presley, congressman mcgovern and congressman thompson. as we visited i.c.e. centers in brazil and louisiana, what we saw was disturbing and what we heard was unacceptable. we met with several individuals being detained. we met with wendy brio, a new orleans area mother of three

from my district. detained after i.c.e. asked her to come in for her routine checkup. she is a volunteer in her children's classroom. she's been in the united states for 17 years. she's married to an american citizen, all of her children were born in the state of louisiana. ms. brito is a model individual who shows up. she volunteers in the school. she is an example of someone doing the right thing. she was going in for her regular, i underscore, regular checkup when she was detained. she was not told why she was being detained and was not afforded the ability to have counsel and not given due process. how could this possibly be right in america? how could this possibly be right? the fifth amendment rights were

violated. this is not about immigration enforcement. this is about targeted cruelty. this is about the trump administration using government and its power to silence dissent, intimidate communities, and chip away at the very foundation of our constitution. this has to mean something to everyone, republicans and democrats have to be concerned when our democracy and the rights that we all are afforded are chipped away unilaterally by one individual. yeah. you all should be scared. republicans and democrats, independents and the like. because if it happened to them, it can happen to you, it can happen to us. we've got to talk about this. we've got to turn the lights on.

let me be clear for those who might misunderstand or choose to misinterpret. no one should be thrown into federal custody for simply speaking their mind, no matter should -- no one should disappear from their family without cause. no one should be punished for writing in their school newspaper. no one should be challenged because you disagree with what they say. listen, our free speech is not built on only protecting speech that we like. in fact, it is protected against those things even we grossly dislike. that's not the point. the framers of the constitution were very clear. we don't want tyranny. we don't want a king. we want a democracy. where you're free to challenge your leaders, to challenge their policies, to speak freely without fear of persecution.

this president clearly doesn't like that. and we're seeing it acted out every single day. these abuses demand transparency. they demand accountability. they demand congressional oversight, and we're going to do just that. we won't stop fighting for the wendys of the world or the people of the world being persecuted for no crime. when we visited louisiana, it was telling that none of these individuals we spoke to were being held for a crime. many of which, as my colleagues have just said, offered to just send me home. and they wouldn't. it's because it's a for profit entity. louisiana is different than most because we are above the 72-hour frame. most of the centers across the country are required to release

them after a short period. in louisiana, you can keep them longer. hence, you see people go from center to center to center. why? because they're timed out and send them to another center. they're timed out and send them to another center. because they're making money. because as long as there's a body in the cot, there's a check in the bank. we cannot allow this gross miscarriage of justice to go on. we cannot allow them to continue to profit from an illegal action, from unconstitutional action, from action that ignores the rule of law. that's why we're here today and why we aren't going anywhere. we're going to continue to stand. we won't stop fighting for every person caught in this system without a voice. we in congress must uphold the values of our founding fathers and the rights of all people in the united states regardless of whether we agree with what they say or not.

none of us support hate speak, anti-semitism or violence of any sort. let's be clear. none of us are supporting anyone who insights violence or anti-gay or anti-black or anti-hispanic or anti anything but we're not sitting idly by and shirk our responsibility with people with oversight to make sure our constitution and individual rights are being upheld to the highest extent of the law. i thank you for being here. next i'll bring up the esteemed member ms. randall for comments. ms. randall: it was my second visit with the detention center with congressman jaypal and

dexter and so excited they made time to come so we could present a united front and show our neighbors and those within the walls in the northwest detention center that we were watching and we were there for them and listening and we wanted to fight for a better immigration system for all of us. you heard two of the stories of individuals we spoke with. and just the day before we visited, another legal permanent resident, a green cardholder, a worker from the university of washington was released after being held for three months, for three months in a northwest detention center as a legal permanent resident. and that her release gave hope to one of the detainees we spoke with who also is a legal permanent resident getting support from an organization

that had helped antilen. but three months to hold someone who has proven that they belong in this country, who has shown up to renew their green card, their legal permanent resident status multiple times over the course of their life without incident, to be snatched off the street in front of your house on the way to work or from the airport and be held is unconscionable and unconstitutional. my neighbors in tacoma and around the district have long protested outside the fence line of the northwest detention center and we have incredible organizations like one america who accompanied us and an organization that works with families of those detained, and my community has been crying for change. this administration wants us to believe that they are arresting

and rounding up the worst of the worst. and you've heard from all my colleagues that is simply not true. they are our neighbors who are hard-working community members who are contributing to our society, who are building our economy, who are raising american citizens who just want to build a strong life and a strong future. but this system is using immigrants as a distraction, as a scapegoat, and as a tool to divide our country. and this pride month, i have been thinking a lot about the intersectional fight that we are in. the work to protect the most marginalized, our immigrants, lbgtq+ immigrants, communities who are easily pushed aside and who this administration are over and over using as fodder in their war to consolidate power and control. and we will not stand for it.

that's why we stand before you today and why we'll continue to show up at detention centers and at protests and pride parades and every opportunity we have in the district and around the country to stand with our immigrant neighbors and to fight for a better system, a system that invests money not in locking people up but in processing, and ensuring we have an immigration system that is humane and effective and doesn't create these long delays and allows us to build the america and whose promise we believe. i'm honored to be a member of the congressional hispanic caucus and to serve alongside long time immigration advocates like congresswoman jaypal and my fellow freshman, congresswoman dexter. i know that when we work together as members of congress and with community, we are more powerful. and we are not giving up this

fight. i'm now so honored to introduce ms. dexter, congresswoman from oregon. ms. dexter: good afternoon. i want to reiterate what my colleague said, my thanks for you being here today. my name is maxine dexter, i'm a mother, a physician, and very proud representative for oregon's third congressional district. last week, as you've heard, i conducted my duty, my duty to perform oversight with my colleagues, congresswoman jaypal and congresswoman randall. we were unannounced and arrived at the northwest detention center in tacoma, washington. what i have to continue to underline is this a for-profit institution that benefits from the unconstitutional imprisonment of people throughout our districts. this facility serves all of the pacific northwest. and donald trump, as you've

heard, is claiming he is targeting violent criminals, the worst of the worst but what i saw, what we saw is very different. he's going after union members, lawful permanent residents, people who have lived in this country for decades, people who pay taxes, raise families, and contribute to our communities in the ways that you've heard. they're very meaningful. and their children have had their parents ripped away from them or they themselves have been ripped away from their families. these are breaking up families. they are citizens. we are undermining trust. we are decreasing the likelihood that people believe in the promise of america when we do this. he's detaining our neighbors, our co-workers, and our loved ones. and again, he's doing it without ensuring due process, without meaningful oversight and with blatant disregard for human dignity. at the northwest detention

center we met moxiemo, a member of the machinist union and father of three united states citizens. he came to the country when he was 12 and married a u.s. citizen and he has no record of violent crime and was detained by i.c.e. after returning from a trip with his wife to celebrate their 20th anniversary. he was sent to the northwest detention center after being kept in the airport facility for five days, no explanation to his family, no explanation to him why he was being detained. this is not an outlier story, it is emblematic of a system that's been weaponized to instill fear, break families apart, and funnel billions of dollars into the pockets of for-profit prison contractors. let me be clear, trump's cruel immigration agenda is not about

your safety. is it is about cruelty, chaos, and control. and i'm here to say the emergency isn't coming, it is here. this is what authoritarianism looks like. but here's what gives me hope. our communities are not powerless. and we will not stand for this cruelty. people across this country are rising up saying enough. we refuse to accept a system that dehumanizes immigrants and tears families apart and funnels billions into private prisons with no accountability. we are organizing, we are speaking out, and we are demanding justice, and the stakes could not be higher, neither could our resolve. we must stay loud, we must stay focused, and know this, every single person besides me will keep fighting every single day for just, humane, and a system that reflects the values we hold as americans.

thank you very much. i know give it back to our chair mr. reyes: i thank the press for being here today to make sure these stories do not go unnoticed. these are serious violations of our law, of due process. mr. correa: and if i can, i also stand and echo the comments made by my colleagues here today. but let me give you a bigger context here of what we're talking about. i'm out of orange county, california. i'm home to the biggest number of dreamers in the country. we're the fourth largest economy in the world, california. the biggest ag sector in the united states, california. most of those workers in the ag sector are undocumented. we have the biggest manufacturing center in the united states, california. most of those workers are what?

undocumented. my point is simple. our economy relies on this work force. we also, by the way, give $100 billion more to the federal government every year as californians than we get back. we're like everybody else. we want safe streets. we don't want serious violent criminals as our neighbors. and i would ask you, would a serious violent criminal show newspaper a courtroom? of course not. in my district today, these individuals are following the law, showing up according to d.h.s. rules, i.c.e. rules, showing up to court hearings, and they're having their removal cases dismissed. do you get that? show up to court for your

removal case, it's dismissed. what do these individuals do? they walk out of the courtroom. immediately as they walk out of that courtroom, they are rearrested and put into what is called an expedited removal process. you get that picture? dismissed, expedited removal process for a process that's more expedited, quickly get them out of the country. i would ask i.c.e., d.h.s. to think really hard, you've got individuals that are workers, part of our economy, contributing, and some have been here 20, 30 years. they're trying to comply with the law. they're following d.h.s. directions, homeland, i.c.e. and when they think i'm clear, they're rearrested. what's the incentive that you're

creating or giving other individuals out there? to go deeper underground. ladies and gentlemen, this is not the way you want to run a country, the fourth largest economy in the world, or this great nation. thank you to the press. please follow these stories. make sure you report them because the world needs to know what's going on. thank you. >> thank you, lowry. thank you, sylvia -- lou. thank you, sylvia. any questions? reporter: i would like to ask you about yesterday's decision of trump in relation to the -- [indiscernible] -- >> the travel ban. i mean, he tried that before in his first term. it was one of the first actions, you may remember, that he took. and we stood up against it and we're going to stand up against

it again. you know, many would like us to be silent. many would like us to hide under a rock. we will not. we will speak out. we will fight back. we will hold these detention centers accountable. we will comply with our jurisdiction to have oversight. mr. espaillat: we will ensure that due process is followed to the letter of the law. we will make sure that no human rights are violated. and that people are treated fairly. and we will continue with these visits to these detention centers. [indiscernible] [speaking spanish]

>> i was about to add, i looked at that list of countries, the travel ban. i believe one of them was afghanistan. in this last week i noticed american veterans of the afghan war in our hallways fighting for afghan refugees to keep them in the u.s. mr. correa: so you're talking about people that fought along americans who watched their back of americans, saved americans in the battlefield and now you are saying you can't come to the u.s. again, what is the message we

are sending the world when it comes to being in the battlefield with americans? this is not good. >> i just want to add and i'm very hopeful that just as the supreme court, you know, held his first travel ban and i think the second and third version, he went to two or three versions of it, held it unconstitutional that they would do that again. ms. garcia: there's no rhyme or reason how he picked and choosed all those countries. it's just deplorable. i think it's constitutional and i'm -- unconstitutional and i'm sure there will be lawsuits filed as quickly as they can. mr. espaillat: questions? back? reporter: [indiscernible] mr. espaillat: i'm going say that the elizabeth, new jersey, detention sent that are we te no objection from. mr. garcia: if i could say something -- ms. garcia: if i could say something. we visited a for-profit center. so it was their decision to make

-- there was a representative there from i.c.e. but anything that we asked for in writing like a copy of the inspection report, a profile of the 800 population that was there, you know, by age, by sex, things that we wanted in writing, they just said no. and he would always just look -- the warden would like to the i.c.e. guy and he'd go, well, no, we'll have to ask i.c.e. so, yes, we got a tour. yes, we were able to visit. but we got no data, no monthly reports, nothing to back up some of the things that they were saying. mr. espaillat: and in addition to that, when asked about the finances of the place, they had no answers. so we want to find out about the finances here, right? and they had no answer when we visited. we'll be looking at that as well. right here and then right here. reporter: obviously saw one of your colleagues, actually, a group of your colleagues being

denied entry to an i.c.e. facility and an altercation ensued and the praition through their -- trump administration through their district attorney filed charges. did that sequence of events give any of pause about conducting oversight and are you giving any of your colleagues advice for how to conduct these oversight visits so that you can get as much access as possible? mr. espaillat: we will not succumb to any intimidation tactics. we will continue to comply with our duty to have oversight of these detention centers. and we will visit them within the parameters of the law. ms. garcia: c.h.c. and a number of other groups have what we call the tool kit that kind of has guidelines of what to ask, sort of a check list. and also things to do and how to respond to some of their actions. so, yes, we provide some

guidance. reporter: -- [indiscernible] -- masks, apprehensions, children, that sort of thing. i guess that makes me wonder, what's the normative process that governs the way that i.c.e. acts? especially when some republicans look at that and say, there isn't any process -- [indiscernible] -- what is supposed to happen? what governs what i.c.e. does and how they go about -- [indiscernible] -- and where can you point to, where do you see -- [indiscernible] -- mr. espaillat: first, let me direct you to a particular case that occurred recently where a honduran mom was being handcuffed and she went into a panic attack and he took her little boy, you know, maybe like a 5-year-old or 6-year-old little boy to step up and say, mom, i'm here for you. listen to that. that's the state of affairs here in america right now.

and of course anybody that steps foot on soil in the united states is already protected and guarded by the u.s. constitution. and there should be due process extended to that person. but i will defer to the attorney in the room. or two of them. ms. garcia: well, you know, there is immigration law, there's immigration law that's been in place and i think the key thing that we should remember is that immigration law is not criminal law. period. the convict in the white house seems to think that any violation of immigration law, they need to be deported, they're criminals. that really isn't -- is just a complete exaj raismghts it's civil -- exaggeration. it's civil. it's what we call administrative law. it's a regulation. so the entire premise of this whole notion that immigration law is criminal law is just

contrary to what immigration law has always been. and they should always have an opportunity -- be afforded an opportunity to go before an immigration law judge. they should be afforded the right to be able to hire an attorney, they should be afforded -- imagine children as young as 5 and 6 taken to a judge without a lawyer, without a guardian ad lietum, without parents. i mean, how can a 5-year-old or 6-year-old present a case? i read that last week somewhere, i forget where right now, children were zip tied, children. there's no reason for that. so if you ask me how do are we normalize it, we start from square one. because this administration not only has a sort of kind of tosses the constitution aside, they've tossed immigration law aside, any notion of due process. they really just want to do whatever they want to do to pick you up.

and the bottom line here is, if they are picking up u.s. citizen children, they're picking up l.p.r.'s, legal permanent residents, if they're picking up people who have status, including students, they're masked, they just show up at 2:00 or 3:00 in the night, i've seen the tapes. that means the next one they could set up is you. they could just decide -- because it's all profiling. oh, well, you look like an immigrant. we're going to stop you. that never -- any time you profile, you're on the road to calamity. but i'll yield to the other lawyer in the room. mr. correa: i just wanted to simply say, the constitution affords due prosexer the rights to everybody -- prosecution, the rights to everybody. period. mr. espaillat: one last question. reporter: you said it's a catch-22 for people going to these hearings. they've been going to for years. what is your advice to igrants who have to go to these

hearings? what should they do to properly prepare? is there anything they can do -- [indiscernible] -- they have a fear they could be detained afterwards. mr. espaillat: as congressman correa stated, many of these cases are being dismissed and the minute they step up those folks are arrested. mr. correa: they're rearrested with expedited removal. and my advice is make sure you have an attorney. consult with your attorney. follow the law. this is about following the law. and sadly what i tell my constituents back home is, you hope for the best. and you prepare for the worst. which means that being here 20, 30 years and your deportation proceedings, you need to make sure that you prepare for who is going to take care of your children, who is going to be there to take care of whatever assets you have.

so, you hope for the best, you prepare for the worst. mr. espaillat: thank you so much, all. ms. garcia: thank you all for coming. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2025] >> these points of interest markers appear on the right-hand side of your screen when you hit play on select videos. this timeline tool makes it easy to quickly get an idea of what was debated and decided in washington. scroll through and spend a few minutes on c-span's points of interest. democratic candidates for new york city mayor participated in the first debate before their rty's primary later this month. nine candidates, including former new